Playlists and Mixes Are Different Problems
On SoundCloud, a playlist — a “set” in the interface, with /sets/ in the URL — is a list of pointers. Each entry is a separate upload with its own page, its own title, and its own uploader. The track names are already there in structured form, which makes a playlist the easier of the two to read.
A continuous mix is the opposite. Twenty tracks are baked into one audio file with one title, and nothing in the page structure says what they are. That is why mixes depend so heavily on whether the uploader wrote a tracklist. If you are working with a long continuous recording rather than a playlist, the mix version of this tool is written for that case.
Rebuilding a Playlist Somewhere Else
The usual reason for wanting a playlist as text is to move it — to Spotify for the commute, to Bandcamp to actually buy some of it, or into a set for a gig. Each identified track comes back with links to Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, and Discogs wherever a match exists, so the copying step is clicking rather than searching each title by hand.
Expect gaps, and expect them to be informative. A SoundCloud playlist put together by someone digging deep will contain uploads that exist nowhere else — self-released edits, label promos, tracks that only sold on vinyl. A missing Spotify link on those is the honest answer, and the Discogs link is often the one that leads to the actual record.
What the Tool Reads
- Upload titles. The primary source for a playlist — most follow an artist and title pattern the parser can split.
- The playlist description. Curators often list what is in the collection, sometimes with catalog numbers.
- Comments. Read the same way as on mixes, which matters when a playlist contains one long recording among the singles.
- Not the audio. On this free anonymous page nothing is listened to. Audio fingerprinting runs on signed-in analyses.
Need the tracklist formatted for sharing or for a gig?